


Sincerely Yours

by halcyon_longing



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: M/M, Reverse Fallout Big Bang, Slow Burn, Smut Eventually, bed sharing, boyfriends saving boyfriends, sole survivor graham, stupid goatees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halcyon_longing/pseuds/halcyon_longing
Summary: Prompt: A series of photographs of MacCready in the male sole survivor's hand. Pictures depicting him tied up, interrogated, and disheveled.MacCready is captured by Raiders and Sole Survivor Graham remembers just how he fell in love with the hired gun with the stupid goatee.





	Sincerely Yours

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the absolutely incredible [seasaltpepper](http://seasaltpepper.tumblr.com) for all their help with this work. Graham is their Sole Survivor and I have had such a blast picking apart his brain and getting the opportunity to take someone else's character and write about them. I didn't get the chance to write everything that I want with Graham's story, so I'll be back to update this work sometime in the future with more MacCready/Graham goodness (and possibly some smut...???)
> 
> Please go check out seasaltpepper's work because I wouldn't have been able to write this without the artistic inspiration!

The pictures arrived in the hand of a raider sent on a suicide mission to Hangman’s Alley. He had no weapons and what could barely pass as armor, so he couldn’t have traveled far to deliver the message. Armed or not, he still looked like a raider, and the turrets took care of him. It wasn’t until Graham went to drag away the body that he discovered the photographs still clutched in the raider’s slackening grasp. His stomach plummeted.

RJ was bound and beaten, each picture showing off different injuries and blossoming bruises as his captors tortured him in increasingly brutal ways. The first in the stack must have been taken right after capture. RJ was on his knees, hands tied behind his back. A fresh cut above his eye trickled bright red blood down his face and soaking into the cloth gag stuffed roughly into his mouth.

_He shouldn’t have let RJ go to Diamond City alone._

Graham sank shakily onto a bench and put his head in his hands. He tasted bile in his throat. His heart pounded a bruise into his ribcage. The air he struggled to inhale seemed to get stuck somewhere behind his Adam’s apple.

_It was a half-mile journey, why didn’t he just tag along?_

The pictures threatened to fall from his shaking fingers as he struggled to catch his breath.

_So stupid to assume the route would be safe. They’d spotted a Deathclaw wandering through the rubble just past the city that one time, for fuck’s sake._

RJ looked at the camera with one good eye; the other was purple and grossly swollen. A red ring around his neck indicated where Graham’s dog tags had been used to choke him. He lay on his side, cheek pressed roughly to the concrete floor as if he’d been kicked over and left there. Graham’s heart ached with guilt.

His fingers trembled as he reached the final picture in the stack. RJ sat slumped in a rickety chair, his hands bound behind him. His already-tattered duster that Graham so loved to see on the floor of their room was now shredded and hung from one shoulder. The most gut-wrenching part, however, was not the way RJ’s clothes were stained with his own blood or how he seemed to be too weak to lift his head to look at the camera. No, the part that made Graham’s stomach churn was the artwork his captors had added in marker. The crudely drawn pistol, firing a red cartoon bullet into RJ’s heart. The comically large teardrop on RJ’s cheek. The smiley face below two words that taunted Graham and caused his vision to blur with angry tears.

_"Sincerely yours.”_

 

* * *

 

 His first thought upon seeing RJ was that there was no way this scrawny kid was the fearsome sniper he’d been told to seek out as a hired gun. He looked no older than a college student, maybe even a high school student without that dumb goatee. And yet, like everyone else in the wasteland, his eyes, though bright blue and piercing, told Graham that he’d seen his fair share of shit in his time.

“You MacCready?”

The kid had a glass of amber liquor pressed to his lips, about to take a drink, and didn’t bother lowering it before he spoke.

“If you’re with Winlock and Barnes, don’t bother. I already told them to get lost.”

He knocked back the booze with the ease of someone who had been raised drinking whiskey instead of formula. The glass clanked onto the table beside him, and he appraised Graham with a scowl.

“Uh no, not running with their crowd, whichever one that is,” Graham said, shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. “Missing the creepy as hell tattoo of my blood type on my forehead.”

Was he really about to hire this kid to watch his back? He remembered being that age: stupid, impulsive, quick to aggression. All those qualities and a knack for spending his paycheck on booze before the essentials. Yeah, he was definitely feeling out of his element if he was hiring this kid who could very well be a prepubescent version of himself.

MacCready continued to say nothing and eye him, dirt-stained fingers lazily skimming over the binoculars hanging from his belt.

Graham felt the sudden prickle of sweat on his forehead. The kid wasn’t making this easy.

“Okay, well, I’m looking for a hired gun and the word around town is that you’re my guy,” he said entirely too quickly, not at all capturing the persona of self-assured tough guy he was going for. “You _are_ MacCready, aren’t you?”

He nodded, still considering him carefully. Graham noticed the faintest of crow’s feet starting to form at the corners of his eyes and the hint of a worry line between his eyebrows. He’d been through something far greater than the general clusterfuck experience of this wasteland; there were little tells that Graham had picked up on, even in the brief time he’d been in his presence.

His hands were calloused differently than the others he’d seen out here, like he’d been carrying the rifle Graham spotted slung across his back since he was a kid. They reminded Graham of the callouses he’d earned playing football from the time he could run without consistently tripping over his own feet, all the way through varsity in high school. The callouses had been part of him, his identity, not like the blisters and bleeding hands he’d spotted on settlers.

His fingers alternated between fiddling with something small in a pocket close to his heart and touching the two slim bullets tucked into his

And finally, there was the way his bright eyes kept darting towards the red glowing hallway that led back into the main room of the Third Rail, almost as if Graham was seconds away from going feral and he’d need to make a quick escape.

“And how do I know I won’t end up with a knife in my back?”

Graham gave a wry chuckle. Everyone he had met so far, apart from the rare characters like Hancock and Preston, hid behind a wall of distrust for everything remotely unfamiliar or foreign. Which was quite understandable. Graham had learned the hard way not to trust anything at face value anymore after he fell for the “someone needs help” ruse and barely escaped a raider ambush at that hardware store.

As much as he hated talking about it, Graham decided that honesty up-front was best at the moment.

“Because… because I have no chance of finding my son without help.”

MacCready’s hand clenched, almost imperceptibly. He was regarding him with a curious expression, one that Graham couldn’t quite figure out.

“So you _are_ the vaultie that everyone’s been talking about.”

When Graham grimaced slightly, MacCready laughed.

“Word gets around fast. That, and the article that Piper girl wrote about you.”

_Damnit._

When he’d agreed to the interview, Graham assumed that ten, maybe twenty people tops, would read it. Newspapers didn’t seem to be very common reading material outside of the city, but if the interview had reached Goodneighbor, it looked like Piper was a bit more influential than he initially thought.

MacCready’s crooked smile faded and his expression became somber.

“So your son was kidnapped.”

Graham nodded and cast his eyes down to the grimy floor. He really didn’t want to go into detail. Talking about it once with Piper had been difficult enough.

“You don’t look like you need much help in combat, if the gun and dog tags are any indication,” MacCready said, gesturing to the shotgun slung across Graham’s back.

“It’s not the combat I need help with,” he muttered, his hand unconsciously clenching at the dog tags around his neck. “I need someone I can trust, who knows the area and the people. Knows the traders who will rip me off, knows where those giant fucking lizards live and how to stay the hell away from them.”

MacCready chuckled.

“Met your first Deathclaw, have you?”

Graham couldn’t stop a snort of laughter from escaping. Deathclaws. These people were pretty straightforward when it came to naming the wasteland’s monstrosities.

“Well, sounds like you need all the help you can get, vaultie. Two hundred and fifty caps, and I don’t do any of that bartering sh- crap.”

The thought of bartering with a person who held Graham’s life in their hands had never even crossed his mind. Graham wasn’t exactly wealthy, but his safety was not something he particularly wanted to skimp on.

“Here’s three hundred. Consider it extra incentive to watch my back out there.”

MacCready weighed the bag of caps in his hand for a moment, seeming to be carefully considering his potential employer one last time. With a smirk, he slipped the bag into his pocket and stood up, offering his hand to Graham.

“You’ve just hired yourself the best sniper in the Commonwealth.”

 

* * *

 

 

“What’s the point of clearing out this fu- freaking dump?”

MacCready bashed another bloodbug into the dirt after Graham crippled its wing with a well-aimed bullet. They’d become quite the exterminating team; MacCready sniped enemies from a distance while Graham got up close and personal with the uglies. MacCready, however, got an odd satisfaction from finishing off the mutant bugs with a crushing stomp once they were squirming helplessly on the ground.

“Vacation home,” Graham called over his shoulder, dispatching a particularly engorged bloodbug. He wasn’t looking forward to dragging the Brahmin corpse, its last meal, off the property.

MacCready crushed the last bloodbug beneath his boot and slumped against the house.

“Planning on taking a lot of vacations?” he asked, voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Permanent one,” replied Graham. He kicked aside a broken fence post and joined MacCready. “Office kind of got blown to bits.”

MacCready smirked as he lit up a cigarette and took a deep, slow drag. He passed it to Graham as he exhaled, the white smoke drifting past his lips. Graham caught himself staring at MacCready’s mouth and inhaled too quickly as the realization jolted through his body.

MacCready slapped him on the back as he doubled over and coughed the smoke from his lungs. When he straightened up, only slightly embarrassed, Graham wiped his watering eyes and sighed.

“But really, I just need a place of my own that’s away from all the settlements. Somewhere to clear my head that no one knows about.”

“Well you brought me along so you’ve already ruined that,” MacCready said flatly, puffing again on the cigarette. The cherry glowed and illuminated the lines on his young face. The fading light from the setting sun made him look far older than his twenty-two years.

“You don’t annoy me like the others do.”

MacCready laughed, warm and genuine. Graham felt his cheeks burn and it had nothing to do with the hot smoke he inhaled.

“Aw thanks, boss. You don’t annoy me either.”

They fell into silence, continuing to pass the cigarette as they watched the rippling water, stained the color of sherbet from the sun’s rays. After a few minutes, Graham felt the urge to say aloud the thought that had been tumbling around his brain since they arrived at the house.

“Nora and I were looking for a house like this. We were going to move when Shaun was a little older.”

MacCready didn’t speak, but the air between them became solemn. The hair on Graham’s arms prickled.

“She knew I didn’t like the suburbs, being surrounded by people, always nosing into each other’s business. It was too easy, having everything within reach. I gave up mercenary work because she hated it, but I couldn’t let go of the need to… prove myself, I guess. A house like this could let us live off the land, away from the convenience of having others around.”

The words rolled off his tongue, and it was far more than he had intended to say. Graham flushed again, suddenly uncomfortable at his openness.

“Must have been pretty different back then if you felt safe setting up in the middle of nowhere,” MacCready muttered, rolling the cigarette between his fingertips and staring at the dull ember. “Not having to worry about raiders or ferals breaking down your door.”

Graham nodded, though he wasn’t sure if it was visible in the growing darkness. There was a hint of bitter jealousy in MacCready’s voice, envy for the life Graham had never been truly thankful for until it was too late. He sounded like he too was about to let something slip from his tongue, but Graham spoke up before he had the chance to make that mistake.

“Speaking of which, we should probably set up for the night before it gets too dark.”

The smoldering cigarette dropped and MacCready ground it into the dirt with the toe of his boot before following Graham inside.

The old house creaked as they walked about, securing the property using their usual methods. MacCready set to work stringing tin cans at the entrances while Graham rigged up their shotgun and tripwire, the trusty combo that had saved their skins countless times to date. The damage wasn’t enough to kill anything more than a radroach, but it certainly gave them enough time to jump from their sleeping bags and deal with the intruders themselves.

MacCready wandered upstairs, presumably to scan the surrounding area from behind the comfort of his scope. It took Graham a few more minutes to rig the shotgun to his satisfaction, then he strolled around the perimeter one last time.

They were a little too close to that Covenant place for Graham’s liking, and he wasn’t particularly fond of the giant sewer pipes across the water, but apart from those things it was nearly identical to what he had imagined for himself and Nora.

He felt a pang of guilt as he remembered what MacCready said earlier about feeling safe in the middle of nowhere. Even a place like this, so close to his ideal home before the war, could kill anyone unfortunate enough to not be as careful as they’d been. If the giant blood-sucking monsters weren’t enough, there were plenty of manmade dangers scattered around. MacCready had pointed out a landmine hidden in a pothole a couple yards from the house, and Graham pulled him away from a tripwire that would have resulted in MacCready’s brains being splattered all over the walls when they opened the door of the boathouse.

Graham pushed down the feelings of guilt and headed back inside the house. He paused with one foot on the stairs as he remembered something.

“MacCready? I’m coming up.”

The kid was skittish and didn’t hesitate with the trigger when startled. Graham had learned quickly to announce his presence when entering a room after one silent approach early in their partnership nearly earned him a bullet between the eyes.

He was at the window, though his rifle sat in his lap and he stared down at it, apparently lost in thought. Graham repeated his name and took a half-step backwards in case he didn’t hear the first time and got spooked.

“You know, you’re different from the others, and not just because of that vault suit you carry around.”

Graham hesitated for a moment, then walked across the room to join MacCready at the window. He didn’t say anything but trusted the silence to urge the kid on.

“You’re the only one who’s actually shared anything about themselves. Now, I don’t know if that’s how it was back then and everyone just went around talking about their personal lives all the time, but out here it’s pretty rare.”

Graham considered the vault suit he kept folded up at the bottom of his bag. Was it strange to have it on his person at all times, like the dog tags around his neck? He didn’t do it consciously. He’d taken it off one day in exchange for the Brotherhood of Steel jumpsuit he looted from a crashed Vertibird and stuffed it into his bag and never took it back out. Now that Graham thought about it, he wouldn’t feel quite right leaving it at Red Rocket. Just like he wouldn’t feel right leaving MacCready in the dark.

“You’re my partner,” he said, opting to look out the window rather than at MacCready. “Don’t see the point in keeping things from you.”

MacCready looked up.

“Partner, huh? Thought I was just a hired gun.”

Graham shook his head.

“I mean, if that’s what you want, we can leave it at that,” Graham said, shrugging, “But I’d like to think we’re a little more than strictly professional at this point.”

MacCready laughed and rubbed a hand over his chin. Graham had to admit that he’d grown rather fond of the goatee he’d once called stupid. They had been on the road for a couple of weeks and MacCready now sported a faceful of scruff. Graham was sure he looked no better, with a full ginger beard now growing in over his normally smooth face, but he would be sure to give MacCready the first turn as soon as they found a razor.

“No, I like it. Partners,” MacCready said, repeating the word quietly to himself as he turned to look back out the window.

Graham meant to clap him on the shoulder jovially, but he ended up placing a hand gently between MacCready’s shoulder blades.

“Partners.”

 

* * *

 

 

The bed-sharing started as a practical measure. The nights were cold, beds were scarce and never found in pairs, and it was much harder to sneak up on two people and subdue them if they were right next to each other. Then, seemingly overnight, it became a comfort. When they were in settlements where there were enough beds to go around, Graham couldn’t sleep without the sound of RJ breathing slowly next to him. He couldn’t relax without hearing RJ’s soft chuckle as he reread the same part of his comic every night. He couldn’t stop thinking about RJ unless he could feel his body heat radiating beside him, and even then, his thoughts never strayed far from the blue-eyed sniper who had become so much more than a hired gun.

Red Rocket was silent apart from the faint hum of the generator behind the building. The two of them lay in bed in their typical position: RJ on the outside because he had the bladder of a four-year-old and Graham near the wall because he was larger and could easily reach over RJ for his gun should the need arise.

Graham toggled through the screens of his Pip-Boy, making mental maps of his trading routes and locations that would need to be cleared out once again to keep them safe. He was attempting to count the number of weeks it had been since they’d visited Lexington and the odds that raiders had returned to the car factory when RJ spoke.

“His name is Duncan.”

Graham looked away from his Pip-Boy and his eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light of the lantern. MacCready had set down his comic and lay staring up at the ceiling.

“Earlier, you asked who I was trying to be a better person for,” he said quietly, not making eye contact. “My son, Duncan.”

A son. He had a son, or he had _had_ a son. Graham shifted beneath the makeshift blanket, trying to hide any surprise on his face that he was unable to conceal, and propped himself up on his elbow.

“What happened to him?” he asked carefully, continuing his attempt to gauge RJ’s unreadable expression.

“He’s in DC, on our farm,” said RJ, and Graham immediately noticed his voice beginning to waver. “He’s…he’s sick and I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

He turned to face Graham and he saw, with a painful jolt to his gut, that RJ’s eyes had welled up with unshed tears that were now threatening to spill over.

“None of the doctors can help him and he’s only getting worse and last time I saw him, he couldn’t even walk… I thought I could take care of him but I couldn’t even protect Lucy and now I’m going to lose him too-”

The words stopped as RJ broke down and covered his face with his hands. He rolled towards Graham’s reaching arms and Graham pulled him tightly to his chest without hesitation. His small frame shook with shuddering sobs as Graham hugged him close. Through the tears, Graham could hear RJ choking out, “I’m sorry,” over and over again. Whether it was meant for Graham, for Duncan, or for this Lucy he assumed was the child’s mother, he didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was RJ, in his arms, broken and needing help putting the pieces back together.

When the sobs subsided and RJ caught his breath, he told Graham the story of how he met his wife, how he lied to her about being a soldier, how they found out she was pregnant when neither of them were prepared to bring a child into the world. Then, he told Graham about the night he lost Lucy to the ferals, how he had to flee with Duncan in his arms while listening to her screams echo through the subway tunnel as they ripped her apart. RJ broke down once again, burying his face into Graham’s chest as he cried. He’d been carrying around this guilt for years, it seemed, and Graham wondered if he had told anyone before now. From the way RJ held onto him, as if he were a life preserver aboard a sinking ship, he doubted it.

The lantern had burned through its remaining oil, leaving the house only illuminated by rays of moonlight by the time Graham realized that RJ was asleep in his arms. He craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the kid’s face, and for the first time since Graham had met him, RJ looked at peace.

Graham pressed his mouth to the top of RJ’s head and whispered two words before laying back and succumbing to sleep himself.

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

 

“So this is it then, huh? You’ve got everything you need and now you’re leaving us behind like trash?”

RJ followed at his heels as Graham ran around Sanctuary, trying to think of anything else he could possibly need. If they had the technology to create Synths, then surely they had purified water? Graham stopped to refill his bottle at the pump just in case. He could practically hear the gears in RJ’s head turning as he prepared his next verbal assault. The smart-mouthed mayor in him was showing.

“Or what, we’re all just supposed to wait here for the big hero to return? If you decide to even come back? If you aren’t fu- freaking vaporized right there in front of us?”

The thought of being killed on the spot by a technical malfunction had certainly crossed Graham’s mind more than once and caused him a number of sleepless nights.

“Sturges knows what he’s doing. I’ll be fine,” he said, more to reassure himself than anything. Of course, even if the teleporter was perfect, that didn’t stop the Institute scientists from shooting him on sight once he got there…

“And I’m coming back with Shaun!” he continued as he spun around to face RJ. A sudden anger was rising in him as his thoughts changed from getting disintegrated to processing what RJ had said. “You think I could leave you behind? After all we’ve been through?”

A shadow of guilt passed over RJ’s features and then he was quiet.

“After I helped you find the cure for Duncan? RJ, ever since you told me about him, I’ve been dreaming about Shaun and Duncan growing up together. Kids need each other out here.”

“I need you here,” RJ muttered, staring at some spot around Graham’s knees.

Graham closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. The trauma this kid had been through, getting close to people and then losing them far too soon. He needed stability and fuck, he’d finally found it with Graham. Now he was taking that away and adding in the uncertainty that he may not even make it back alive.

Graham stepped forward and placed his hands on RJ’s shoulders. He couldn’t help but reflect on how he’d filled out over the last couple of months. He was still small, but regular meals that didn’t consist solely of alcohol had helped him develop a layer of lean muscle on his frame. Graham pushed away the memories of the occasions when they’d awoken on a too-small mattress with their bodies pressed together and limbs intertwined.

“RJ, I swear to you I’m coming back,” he said solemnly, meeting RJ’s eyes. He reached up and tugged the dog tags over his head before pressing them into RJ’s hand. “I swear.”

RJ glanced down at the dog tags and squeezed them tightly.

“Thank you.”

And then he was kissing Graham, his free hand fisted in the front of his Brotherhood jumpsuit and pulling him close. Graham barely had time to react before RJ stepped back with a shocked expression that indicated he had acted on impulse.

“I…” he started, but the clanging of a bell across Sanctuary stopped him. He looked in the direction of the sound, towards the teleporter, and saw Sturges waving frantically and yelling something inaudible. They’d found the signal. It was now or never.

Graham turned to say something, anything to RJ, but he was already gone.

“Get on the platform, we don’t have much time before they catch on and change frequencies!” Sturges shouted over the deafening whirring and clanking of the teleporter as Graham approached.

Shaun. His mission now was Shaun. First he’d find Shaun, then he’d worry about downloading whatever information Sturges wanted onto that holotape. And then… no, RJ would be fine.

Graham stepped onto the platform, barely registering what Sturges was saying. He’d spotted RJ across the cracked road, leaning in the doorway of a house. He couldn’t see his expression but he knew it was not a happy one. Fuck, there was so much he wanted to say, so much he needed to say. He’d known for a while that there was more than just a friendship between them. He felt it every time they were together, like an ever-contracting string tied around their waists that kept pulling them closer. He’d wanted to say something, to sit down and have this discussion, but then they had the courser chip and then they were building the teleporter and it had all happened so quickly.

And RJ chose now to kiss him.

“Ready?”

Sturges’ voice snapped him back to the task at hand. Graham nodded, ignoring the lingering feeling of RJ’s lips on his.

Shaun first, then everything else.

He made to raise his hand, to wave goodbye to RJ, but then everything was gone in a flash of blue.

 

* * *

 

 

Graham threw the pictures to the ground and stepped on them as he stormed into the shack he shared with RJ. He tugged a suitcase from under the bed and sat on his haunches, considering the options before him.

Turning the raiders into puddles of goo was tempting but he was craving the kick from a gun that the plasma rifle just couldn’t provide. A shotgun would do the trick, but he didn’t trust himself to be able to reload it quickly once he was in a blind rage. The hunting rifle, on the other hand…

Graham picked up the rifle and ran his fingers along the stock. He’d always hated them, how clunky they felt in his hands, until RJ let him practice with his own prized weapon. They spent countless hours perched at the railings of freeways, scoping out Super Mutants and raiders far below them. He remembered the feel of RJ’s hands on his, the tickle of his breath as he whispered in his ear to relax and pull the trigger. Most vividly of all, he remembered RJ beaming at him when he shot the mini nuke out of the hand of a Suicider, causing an explosion that took out the whole pack of Super Mutants. Graham couldn’t help but feel a warm sense of pride, knowing that RJ only ever smiled like that at him.

Graham stood with the hunting rifle in his hands and kicked the suitcase back under the bed. He was going to see that smile again, he’d make sure of it.

Today, the hunters would become the hunted.

 


End file.
